The bottom line is that Gadi Eisenkot is completely convinced that Benjamin Netanyahu is losing the upcoming elections. We are sitting in the car, on the way from a meeting with reservists in Sderot to evacuees from Kibbutz Kfar Aza who are staying at Kibbutz Ruhama. The summer heat swirls around us.

"Israel is held captive by Netanyahu's fear trap", he says, "criminal trial. Relations with Trump. Fear of the end of his road. The situation. The polls. He is a frightened person. They are in panic. Notice how he divides his time. Everything is devoted to the primaries. There are no more discussions about anything, not really - not Iran or Lebanon. There is no directive".

Eisenkot's conviction, to remove doubt, does not present itself as the hubris of "we have already won". That is not his type. When we talk, he pulls out a page with talking points in his handwriting; "I got up to prepare at 6 in the morning". He wants to instill a sense of approaching victory in the camp he leads, which is not accustomed to victories; to widen the cracks of insecurity in the Likud. There will be those who mock the confidence of a relatively new politician, running against the king of winners of Israeli politics for generations. With Eisenkot everything is reasoned, organized.

"Netanyahu's attempt to obscure the failure of October 7 through military achievements has collapsed. He is willing to sell anything so that there will be a political inquiry committee. Lebanon is a political graveyard for prime ministers, from Menachem Begin to Ehud Olmert. Now Netanyahu is deeply immersed in it. We hear that he is threatening Chaim Katz that he will leave the Likud. He will not get more than 10 mandates alone, without the Likud. Ben-Gurion, who was greater than him, did not succeed with Rafi".

We met at the local government conference at the exhibition gardens. Around him the aura of the camp leader is certainly gathering; he responded with great patience to endless selfie requests. An interesting phenomenon was observed: from some of the conversations, and the banter, he really enjoys it. The last time he was at the Expo, a new party was presented: the State Camp z"l. Eisenkot returned to the exhibition gardens as the leader of the new leading party in the camp. Such are the days of the Israeli center.

On the stage, he said that the IDF will need to complete its mission in the Gaza Strip - to dismantle the military and governmental power of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a healthier Israeli conversation, such a statement would have received attention, sparking public discussion; Eisenkot means it in all seriousness, and the meaning is a renewal of fighting or military pressure in the strip - until a decision or an arrangement to disarm Hamas. Not a given matter in the third year of war.

He told about an encounter in the north in the 1980s, when he was a young battalion commander. How they asked him to wait in the field another hour and a half after eliminating the terrorists, because the prime minister (Yitzhak Shamir) wants to examine the area. "Imagine today a prime minister who cancels his schedule and takes a helicopter to the north because he wants to see what happened".

Chaim Bibas, chairman of the local government center, stood and talked with him for a quarter of an hour in the central hall. Bibas knew what he was doing. There is a candidate for prime minister, and currently he is the leader, and it is not the prime minister; nothing bad will come to Bibas from conveying the message that he is not in anyone's pocket.

Moments before we headed to the car and the drive south, Eisenkot went to the trunk, took off his jacket and buttoned shirt, and changed into something comfortable. "This is a 30-second skill. Menelis (Ronen Menelis, his senior advisor) is afraid they will catch me like this one time, photograph me, and I will be without abs".

It is easy for him to escape to the strategic situation (a constant challenge for his energetic spokesperson, Noam Bar Lev). Apart from Yariv Levin, he thinks, there is no one who can ask hard questions in cabinet meetings. National Security Council head Shmuel Ben Ezra, unlike his predecessor Tzachi Hanegbi, cannot really pick up the phone to Marco Rubio, the American secretary of state and national security advisor. There is no longer a weighty security-political wing in the Defense Ministry. In general, Netanyahu does not believe in strategy - but in dealing with the immediate, the urgent. More than once, in their conversations, he would say "a-s-t-r-a-t-e-g-y", while stretching the syllables, with disdain, in a mocking tone, like Yinon-Magali. Once Eisenkot recommended a book to Netanyahu: "Ending Wars Through Stratagems", by Martin Indyk, which deals with Henry Kissinger and his diplomacy. Secretary General Roman Gofman, who was present, asked to write down the name; that was more than a year ago. He is not impressed that Netanyahu read it.

In Sderot, Eisenkot goes to eat lunch at an Asian restaurant. The previous time Eisenkot was in Sderot, they took him to a falafel stand. At the entrance sat several men. "Ashkenazi", they said to the former chief of staff, "will not get a single vote in Sderot". "I did not know where to start", laughs Eisenkot.

The owner of the sushi restaurant is Nir Shohat, a reservist from Nir Am. Yotam Haim, who was kidnapped and accidentally killed by the IDF, worked at the restaurant. "I hate the discourse of yes Bibi-no Bibi", says Shohat to Eisenkot, "and I cannot tell you that here the discourse has changed since October 7. In the kibbutz movement everything has moved right". They talk about the Hamas raid. "In 2016", Eisenkot tells him, "we trained here on the border for a massive Hamas infiltration, including above-ground and air, with the aim of deciding the Gaza division, conquering settlements and carrying out kidnappings".

Shohat tells him that half the customers in his restaurant, in his impression, believe in "betrayal from within". And half of those aged 18-21, Eisenkot replies to him, "and that is an absurd thing. That thought".

"Can I raise my daughters here in peace?" he says to Eisenkot, "or fear Nukhba rape?" You can raise your children here in peace, Eisenkot replies cautiously, if we do what is required. After all, we want to continue raising children here, and security is required - and also what will connect them.

I get the impression that Shohat expects to hear big declarations from Eisenkot. Something dramatic, cutting and exciting. The chairman of Yesh Atid responds with organized answers of a staff officer: to plan security, to execute, to invest in education.

The restaurateur asks how he sees the State of Israel in the future. "A Jewish, democratic and liberal state", replies Eisenkot. "Liberal has become a curse", says Shohat. "The Likud was founded as a national liberal movement", remarks Eisenkot, "that is its name literally. Today the state education is only 47% of Israel's children. That is impossible. Priorities need to change. Start with education, and education in the periphery".

After that there is a meeting with an organization supporting reservists and their families, in Sderot. "We are not in over-reporting, but in under-reporting of post-trauma", says one of the organizers. "People who were considered the engine of the economy. High-tech. People you want to be your neighbors. And then he returns home - and turns on his wife. Everyone returns from the war different, and everyone feels that only those who were with them can understand why. Sometimes 60% of the battalion arrives with such phenomena". Someone else, an officer who served hundreds of days of reserve duty, talks about the wave of suicides, and those the IDF does not recognize. "Let it be clear", says one of the organizers, "what bothers reservists the most is not mental problems. It is an immediate debt of 20 thousand to the National Insurance. Recently I negotiated with lenders in the gray market, to reach an arrangement with a reservist".

The meetings are not an excuse for him to give a short speech. He listens. We will have to get used to a long emergency routine, he tells them, "and I have full appreciation for what you are doing. A state solution is required, on the scale of a generation ahead. None of us has gone through what the reservists are going through, in terms of the length of the war, the burden".

There is one question, and nothing else. Is the leader of the new bloc capable of transferring Likud voters, or at least holding onto mandates that switched sides two-three years ago. We are talking about about 7-8 mandates; without them there is no upheaval. Naftali Bennett calls them "the Likudniks of Rishon LeZion". In religious Zionism, Bennett gets almost no votes; in the moderate Likud area they like him very much. Certainly believe that he is right-wing. Until two weeks ago, Bennett led the bloc. As became clear in the famous scene in the "Uvda" documentary and Ben Sheni, Bennett is positioned (or was positioned) much further right than Eisenkot.

Eisenkot is in contact with Tzipi Livni. I wonder if they are talking about the 2009 campaign. Livni's advisors failed to crack the growing support for the Likud; in their distress, they went for the easy solution. "Kadima" lost right-wing votes - and compensated itself with cannibalization of the bloc. That ended with Netanyahu's rule of more than 12 years, continuous. Bennett and Lapid are not running a campaign in direct confrontation against Eisenkot, but this is their claim: the fear that Likud voters will abandon once there is a new candidate for prime minister. They ignore the cost of the merger between Yesh Atid and Bennett.

Against the Bennettists' claim stands strong public sympathy for Eisenkot - at least until now. A certain Teflon feeling. The fact that on the coalition's television channel, in recent weeks, a full state of emergency has been declared. He is attacked on everything, from his summary document as commander of the Judea and Samaria division to the Dahiya doctrine. Clearly, he is perceived as a threat. On the other hand, the poison machine has only begun to operate.

The attempt to present him in a hesitant light annoys him. "A different league", he says about Netanyahu, "we saw his panic on October 11, when we joined the government". He tells about his attempts to convince Netanyahu to launch the ground maneuver in the Gaza Strip. In the cabinet he said that "a herd of elephants needs to pass through Gaza".

"Netanyahu", says Eisenkot, "asked me if my son is in the maneuvering forces. Unfortunately I could not ask him the same question. I told him - my son and two nephews. He asked me about it on two different occasions". He does not know why Netanyahu checked. "But now, these impudent people are trying to sell some perception of reality". He tells how they went out on an operation in Rafah during the war; in general, he suggested to Netanyahu to bring it to a vote immediately. Netanyahu got angry; "You want us to vote, so we will vote!". There was a vote. Two days later the IDF began the operation.

The list is long. The April 2024 attack, by Iran. Chief of Staff Halevi informs the government that hundreds of drones are on the way to the State of Israel. He offers a scale of response. Eisenkot tells the reduced cabinet: I suggest carrying out everything. The most powerful response possible against Iran. Netanyahu evades; they decide to authorize Netanyahu, Gallant and Gantz to decide, bypassing Eisenkot, who wants a more aggressive response. "In the end the air force receives an order and takes down one target. Ben Gvir said it is a dud. First time I agreed with that calf".

Eisenkot can continue like this for a long time, and he has a long memory. He was appointed commander of the Judea and Samaria division at the height of the suicide bombing period. One of the first decisions: to remove the tanks from the city centers - and not because of fear for the fate of Palestinian civilians. The tanks were being poured with white paint, tires threaded on the barrel. Eisenkot saw this as damage to deterrence. He told the commanders - you need to kill them with pistols and knives; the plans he implemented led to the collapse of suicide terrorism. And the Dahiya doctrine? "That is indeed a plan I prepared as head of the operations branch. We demolished 246 buildings. In all of them were Hezbollah terrorists. Every missile goes to its target. That is the reason that after the war Nasrallah said he would not have gone out to it if he had known what would happen".

There is one matter that the Likud campaign holds in a state of siege. For them, it is the cluster bomb they will drop on Eisenkot before the elections. And that is the Elor Azaria affair. Not for nothing do coalition representatives fall silent on the most controversial issue during Eisenkot's term as chief of staff; they are simply waiting with the ammunition.

The shooting carried out by Azaria, who killed a mortally wounded Palestinian terrorist in Hebron, neutralized, was a transformative moment in Israeli society - and also for Idan Netanyahu. The way the Likud and Netanyahu responded was the end of the era of statesmanship, or any pretense of it. Chief of Staff Eisenkot became the lightning rod immediately. When the Likud wants to paint Eisenkot as left-wing, it will say that Bibi embraced the Azaria family. Eisenkot sent him to prison. The potential for a campaign is completely clear. After October 7, and after the way approaches in Israeli society to harming innocents have changed, killing a terrorist - even if neutralized and wounded, even if with real risk to forces around - will seem banal.

Eisenkot's fundamental rule is that he has no intention of disguising himself. In the Azaria affair, it was the battalion commander and the brigade commander, David Shapira and Guy Hazut, who managed the initial event. The investigation and other proceedings were conducted naturally in the IDF, from the company commander level and up. Netanyahu began with a statement that the shooting "does not characterize the values of the IDF". The defense minister issued a similar statement. The chief of staff spoke only after them. Until the morning, as recalled, the prime minister flipped, on the advice of his advisors and family and due to anger on social networks. The prime minister called Chief of Staff Eisenkot and told him that he intends to invite Elor's father to his office and asked that Eisenkot join; that ended with a famous phone call. Eisenkot told Netanyahu that he has no intention of meeting or talking with the father of a suspected soldier who is under investigation by the military police. He ultimately commuted Azaria's sentence.

Eisenkot sees the affair as a watershed, but not for him personally: he was later received with singing and dancing in Ofra, and public support for him or the IDF following the affair did not drop. All this does not mean that in retrospect, it is not an effective tool for Bibi.

There are residents of Kfar Aza who are unable to return and resettle in it, after the trauma they experienced. They want to stay as a group, as a community, but have difficulty returning to the place where they experienced the massacre. The state is delaying, or does not want, to give them a solution, as a group. I accompany Eisenkot to a meeting with them. This is not a given meeting. It would have been easy to avoid it. Eisenkot's ethos is not Zionist, but super-Zionist. His children have the right to an American passport; he forbade its issuance. There is a fairly famous story about how it happened. One day he returned home and found his wife Chana, and her mother (an American citizen) sitting and filling out forms. The family was supposed to go to study in the US, and they thought it was a good time to issue American passports to the children. Eisenkot collected the papers, threw them in the trash, and told his mother-in-law that it would be better if she funded swimming lessons for the children. "Because they are growing up in Israel - with their backs to the sea". That is the type.

And therefore it was worth looking at his conversation with survivors of Kfar Aza, who spoke honestly about their pain and inability to come to terms with life on the border of the strip. "They present us as abandoning the ship", said one mother, "as if we do not care about our community. They romanticize this return. There are people in this room who vomit when they pass the yellow gate of Kfar Aza, because of the trauma. We spent 25 hours in the safe room. I could not look my son in the eyes, because I knew it would be the last time I would look at him". She cries. "I do not believe anyone. I cannot live next to Arabs anymore. On the other side of the fence. Period. Enough for one to cross the fence".

Eisenkot listened. Solutions need to be found for all of you, he said. Wherever you want, as a community. To arrange with the kibbutzim in the area.

"Smotrich, Channel 14, they do not understand, these jokers", Eisenkot tells me in the car, "that all these attacks only strengthen my determination. I am driven by a sense of heavy personal, national and family responsibility. It does not move me. It only makes me a bull in a square. You know, I am a Taurus. And I am doing the right thing". When he says "family responsibility", it is clear that for him replacing Netanyahu is a matter related to the memory of his son, Gal, who fell in the strip.

These are determined statements. They have the style of Ariel Sharon, from whom Eisenkot learned quite a bit. But the eye needs to be on the ball, and the test is clear: Will Eisenkot succeed in bringing or preserving the votes of right-wing voters, those who voted for Netanyahu's coalition in 2022 and crossed the lines, or are considering doing so. They are the basis of any change. And it is not only related to his actions, but also to the way he will be portrayed and described, to the campaign against him, to the media agenda, on which Netanyahu wins as prime minister. Determination, and also early and meticulous planning, are not always enough.